Current Projects
The Spaces Between
Written for Eighth Blackbird (2026)
Commissioned by the Gilmore Piano Festival
Clarice Assad: The Spaces Between plays with the architecture of filling gaps left by other instruments, creating dialogues between different voices and generating a kinetic need to fill a void, as if struggling to find stillness within itself. One instrument’s rest becomes another’s call, creating a texture of constant motion through perpetual exchange. The work also journeys through contrasting worlds, as virtuosic passages give way to shadowed, dreamlike territories and sonic landscapes that delve into hidden chambers of the psyche but don’t stay there too long. Instead, the piece moves through and returns, transformed, with more vibrancy, lightness, and playfulness. Latin and American musical gestures appear throughout, but as traces rather than declarations.
composition as explanation
David Lang: When Eighth Blackbird asked me in 2016 to propose a project for them that they could perform at the Chicago Arts Club, in conjunction with the Arts Club’s centennial year, I started thinking of other kinds of actions that they might concentrate on, that would transform them. I began to think of what it would be like make a piece that required them not just to act, but to become actors - in order to perform it they would be forced to take acting lessons, to study diction, to study the art of theater. In other words, my piece would not just ask them to move and to speak, but it would ask them to commit themselves to a rigorous process that would transform them as performers. I settled on using parts of Gertrude Stein's 1923 lecture "Composition as Explanation," in which a yet-to-be-famous Stein explains to her audience what she is doing in her writing, in the same repetitive and plainspoken and circular format that she uses in her writing. In other words, she has blurred the relationship between her content, her form and her performance, in much the same way that I have tried to blur the musicality of Eighth Blackbird.
Commissioned by Eighth Blackbird
Directed by Anne Bogart
2025 Grammy Award Nominee — Best Contemporary Classical Composition
Eighth Blackbird x San Fermin: “Start at the End”
Featuring the music of Ellis Ludwig-Leone, Eighth Blackbird and San Fermin explore a world where every conclusion is a catalyst, and the end is simply the beginning. The first half begins with a short work for solo piano and gradually the group of performers grows. First, with a duet for flute and vibraphone. Next, a trio for violin, cello, and piano and finally, with the full sextet performing Family Machine, a 2026 commission.
The second half of the program sees Eighth Blackbird joined by San Fermin, performing songs from their most recent album Arms, which was written by Ludwig-Leone during a tumultuous period following a couple of breakups.
In this intimate evening of chamber music and songs, genre distinctions are disregarded in favor of storytelling, and a recognition of the alchemical power of music to transform loss into something life-affirming and communal. What emerges is not a linear arc but a cycle—an ending that generates motion, a farewell that becomes the energy required to begin again.
Vital Sines
Viet Cuong: Vital Sines is dedicated to my father’s memory as the guardian of my musical life, as well as the many moments during my life when I found sanctuary in music. The creation of this particular piece, though challenging, was a way of finding solace when I needed it most. Throughout the piece, I employ several musical sequences and chaconne forms, all of which use repetition as a means of development. The overarching structure of the piece thus bears a resemblance to the visual depiction of the sine wave, rising and falling like the tracing of breaths and heartbeats. There is of course comfort in the familiarity of continued repetition. But I also followed memories back to my teenage years in Band, when that community had the extraordinary ability to not just bring me comfort but heal my heart. What I then realized was that all the other musical communities I have become a part of since then, Band or not, hold this same healing power.
Original version for wind ensemble commissioned for Eighth Blackbird through the generous support of the U.S. Navy Band
Concerto for Eighth Blackbird and Wind Ensemble or Orchestra (2022, ‘23)
Orchestral version commissioned by the Pacific Symphony (Carl St. Clair, Music Director)
Mirrored Pool
The Mirrored Pool is a mask and puppetry performance created by puppet master Tom Lee. In a wordless dream space at the edge of a shallow pool of water, Puppeteer and Puppet are presented as evocatively designed characters who switch back and forth between perceived identities as lovers, rivals, and caretakers. The performance is an exploration of virtuosic puppetry and mask performance, but also of the audience’s perceptions and prejudices about character and self.
Eighth Blackbird enters into this collaboration from their own deep musical explorations and experiments with puppetry. Lisa Kaplan and Matthew Duvall help create a soundscape that is manipulated by touch and gesture and channels the materiality of the shallow pool of water and mirrored moon that create the setting for the piece. At some points, each musician becomes a puppeteer, mask wearer and conjurer for this deeply experiential performance. More on this project HERE.
Eyrie Festival
The Eyrie Festival was the culminating celebration of the Blackbird Creative Lab community, produced by Eighth Blackbird. This landmark gathering brought together more than fifty composers and performers from across the Lab’s history—alumni, faculty, and special guests—for two days of innovative, collaborative performance. The festival took over all 4 performance spaces at the Athenaeum Center as well as expanding to areas not typically used for live music like lobbies and hallways.
The Eyrie Festival operates on a 3-year cycle in alignment with the Blackbird Creative Lab. The next Eyrie Festival is projected to be held in 2028.
